A common task in the design of a user interface is to enable objects from a list of objects, such as an ordered list of objects of various sizes and aspect ratios, to be displayed within a bounding region. One challenge in implementing such a design is associated with formatting each object and laying out the objects in an efficient manner. Constraints in a typical implementation include reducing the waste of screen real estate associated with space between objects, reducing the loss of important information due to cropping objects, reducing the need to change the aspect ratio of an object in a way that can impact the perceived quality of the object, allowing the user interface control over the size of each object, maintaining, where appropriate, the order of objects within an ordered list to provide some control for relative priority, and maintaining the relative orientation of objects. In addition, design challenges continue to impose constraints associated with efficiently using CPU, memory, and other system resources.